Most doors used in construction today are of the “pre-hung” type. More particularly, the door and door frame are prefabricated and are sold as a unit. The entire door and door frame unit is then installed by the purchaser. A large percentage of these pre-hung doors are made of wood and are installed as entry doors. While entry doors especially French doors are intended to function to exclude uninvited guests when locked, they are often inadequate for that purpose.
Unfortunately, even when lock sets and deadbolts are used, it can be relatively easy for an intruder, such as a burglar, to gain entry to the dwelling or business by forcefully kicking the door in the general vicinity of the door lock latch bolt and/or the deadbolt latch bolt, thereby breaking the door jamb where the strike plates are located and allowing the door to be opened. That problem is addressed by prior products of the applicant described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,070,650 and published application 2008/0224486, the entire disclosures of which are incorporated herein by reference.
A particularly vulnerable type of door is a French door which includes two pivoting doors that come together and together at a central closure for one another. Commonly, such French doors have the usual latch bolt and perhaps a deadbolt and a mechanism to actuate a slide bolt through the top of a passive door to protrude a slide bolt into an opening in the trim of the door frame at the top of the door. This provides some strength to the door to keep it closed and house properly within the door frame. However, it has been found that such doors continue to have weakness, and are particularly vulnerable to an intruder kicking at the door. Provisions like those set forth above can be used to reinforce the connection between the two doors, but there is still a weakness in the connection of the doors to the frame. This results in the continuing vulnerability for such French doors.